At Dallas Jan 9th 9PM

I have joined a Warriors board since I live in a bay area, and they have similar views of Flip - good regular season coach that doesn't have what it takes to finish the job. Not good at adjustments and gets flabergassed when going gets tough. And quite inflexible to boot.

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Those have been the biggest criticisms of him going back to his days in Minnesota. I remember watching a rerun of the Kings-Wolves WSMF from '04 - and the problems he had then are the same ones he has now. His offense was geared towards jumpers then, too; one analyst even commented about it - of course, he didn't have the personnel 1-12 he has now, but they won that game on KG's sheer will, not because Flipper outcoached Adelman or made any adjustments. It's just the way he is. He buckles under pressure - that's not gonna cut it when he's matched up against someone who can actually coach championship ball - or Mike Brown.

Those have been the biggest criticisms of him going back to his days in Minnesota. I remember watching a rerun of the Kings-Wolves WSMF from '04 - and the problems he had then are the same ones he has now. His offense was geared towards jumpers then, too; one analyst even commented about it - of course, he didn't have the personnel 1-12 he has now, but they won that game on KG's sheer will, not because Flipper outcoached Adelman or made any adjustments. It's just the way he is. He buckles under pressure - that's not gonna cut it when he's matched up against someone who can actually coach championship ball - or Mike Brown.

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This team does have players that can go inside - Sheed, Stuckey, Chauncey. But Sheed prefers hanging out at the 3-point line, and the rest of the team settles for forced jumpers when going gets tough. Maybe it is not just Flip, but the whole team is not mentally strong enough to pull through the difficulties and takes an easy way out. Lots has been written about that, and not in just local press, that if you take Pistons out of the comfort zone, they'll begin jacking the jumpers and their offense will grind to a halt. And the team is vulnerable to pick and roll.

Laimbeer would have called a timeout 2 minutes into last nights game and ripped the starters a new ARSE last night. I can see the image in my mind of Bill telling them they are all a bunch of prima donnas that didn't deserve to be in the same building with the Mavs playing like that (spitting while he talks the whole time)

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Former NBA coach John Calipari and now coach of the undefeated # 2 Memphis tigers did just that in a game last Thursday vs Siena.

Siena led early as Memphis coach John Calipari was so dissatisfied with the way his starters were playing, he made wholesale substitutions a minute into the game

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. After about 3-4 minutes of watching the bench, the starters got the message and Calipari put them back in....they won 102-58

This team does have players that can go inside - Sheed, Stuckey, Chauncey. But Sheed prefers hanging out at the 3-point line, and the rest of the team settles for forced jumpers when going gets tough. Maybe it is not just Flip, but the whole team is not mentally strong enough to pull through the difficulties and takes an easy way out. Lots has been written about that, and not in just local press, that if you take Pistons out of the comfort zone, they'll begin jacking the jumpers and their offense will grind to a halt. And the team is vulnerable to pick and roll.

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Yeah. I've read those too. It's just we don't have a true inside presence who will spend time in the paint 90% of the time unless it's demanded of them. A lot of our failings are on the players for sure, but Flip can't get off scot-free. He needs to put his foot down and make them do what he wants, or else. LB could do that. Pop could. Riles could even make Shaq do what he wanted (lose weight prior to last season) - Flipper doesn't have the hardware for that, though. Dude doesn't even care where the points come from, so no, I don't believe he's demanding more interior play from the guys either. Haven't we been dead last in points in the paint the last 2 years, as we are now?
Sheed is our only real post presence - but he's almost 34; he can only do/take so much. Particularly when there are so many defensive lapses on the perimeter (I'm looking at you Chauncey, Tay) that he has to cover for as well. If he were 22 like D12, sure, why not - but he's not.

When matched against quicker players, Chauncey gets burned everytime. If he's being played by bigger players, he's pretty ineffective as well. He can post up or drive the lane, but he can't explode to the basket; he's a low precentage shooter, even from inside, and he's not always gonna get the call. Rip's handles suck. He's not a penetrating guard, and he shouldn't be. He's just gonna get himself beat up and we don't need that. Tay's a viable option, but he's so passive, and he's not exactly gonna beat his man either. Dice usually only shoots 12-15 footers. At this point, Stuckey/Max are our best hope for that paint scoring.

Flip Saunders said he was extremely disappointed with his team's effort. He said missing shots is expected, but failing to play with desire is unacceptable. He hopes to see a better effort tomorrow night in San Antonio.

I actually left mid 3rd quarter, and went to get Starbucks so i didn't see the rest of the game, but in generally speaking;

There was no cohesiveness out there. It looked exactly like when the team was fractured throughout the ECF last year. It seems like half the players have quit on the coach, and the other half are just apathetic. When the team isn't on the same page, they usually look like what we've saw tonight.

Flip isn't cutting it. We found a defensive match-up that worked against Nowitizki (which is well-known around the league) and abandoned it. I also don't think it's coincidental that our defense getting worse (esp perimeter) coincides with AA not playing more. That line-up in the 2nd was holding it's own defensively. The starters just didn't have it. They took jumpshot after jumpshot with no repercussion. Tay is killing us, and i also thought his quotes before the game were quite telling. Don't have a link but something about not knowing if the Pistons have the mind-set or hoping they did before going into Texas.

Flip doesn't care apparently about points in the paint or points given up in the paint even though getting/giving easy baskets is CRUCIAL to a championship team.

The difference in energy with the bench/starters is so drastic sometimes, it's palpable when you're watching it. I still think the starting line-up needs to be shaken up. Amir NEEDS to play. We desperately need shot-blocking, and rebounding. Sheed can't do it by himself, and frankly looks as fed up with the quick jumpshots/getting burned on the perimeter as we are.

This team isn't going anywhere with Flip, and even though it's early in the season i've been convinced for awhile. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, and i'm getting sick of watching the prime of this team go by with his incompetence.

My faith in Joe D is taking a hit as well. I keep holding onto the fact that it's a money issue, but that's not really a good excuse anymore.

Thanks Dre for the link. I eventually figured it out LOL. I'll be watching tomm. I must be masochist or something.

edited to add;
Does anyone remember the last time we got beat, and came out swinging LB style?

Here is what I noticed. Herrmann was very good about staying close to Dirk's body on the shot and not reaching upward. You could say that he was up in his grill.

Dirk is tall enough to get his shot off against almost everyone and he is very used to seeing hands up near his release point.

Herrmann's technique was sort of the same as what Bowen does and I think that it threw Dirk off. Pretty sure he'd get used to it after a while and start hitting again .

But it is good to see the tenacity. And at least we have a guy who seems to defend a little differently, which is good if you are looking to stop a forward who is on a roll.

One thing that I thought was strange was that Herrmann and Hayes were out there together almost the whole time. It was almost as if Saunders didn't want to make Hayes think that he was losing PT to this guy.

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You would think that, but it worked again with Jackson in the GS series as well. That's the way to defend Dirk. If you let him get a rhythm early, you're screwed. And i read somewhere that he only went to Hermann to manage the foul situation so it's not like he actually came up with a bright idea. And that was proven when Hermann sat in the 3rd.

And i read somewhere that he only went to Hermann to manage the foul situation so it's not like he actually came up with a bright idea.

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That's not true. Neither JMax nor Dice were in foul trouble when Herrmann came in during the 2nd quarter; in fact Dice ended up not committing any fouls at all for the whole game, and JMax only had one. Sheed was playing with 2 fouls, but he was the one big man out there with the small lineup as Herrmann guarded Dirk.

Now, I agree that something should have changed in the third quarter once it became clear that the starters were reverting to the same crappy play from the first quarter. I'm not sure that bringing Herrmann back in would have been such an obvious answer--the starters did play pretty good D at the beginning of the quarter, but fell behind because of stupid forced Js. But an adjustment should have been made nonetheless.

Going into the Celtics game, the Pistons had won 18 of 20. There are a couple of teams in the NBA that are actually better than Detroit. The Pistons just happen to be playing 3 of them in a row.

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We're not talking about wins and losses. I am happy with the record of the team. We're talking about the adjustments necessary to win. Flip didn't even try - he has that blind faith in the starters that hurt them two years in a row in the conference finals, and that's where it will end this year as well unless something changes. He has to at least try something different if the "good old way" is not working. He is at the frontline and he has to fight the complacency. If player is not performing and his head is not in the game - sit him, don't stick with him until the game gets out of hand. For the most part, Flip has done good job managing the minutes, but he has to be firmer with starters. Nellie kept his three top players on the bench for the most part of the Portland game because they didn't produce.

Laimbeer would have called a timeout 2 minutes into last nights game and ripped the starters a new ARSE last night. I can see the image in my mind of Bill telling them they are all a bunch of prima donnas that didn't deserve to be in the same building with the Mavs playing like that (spitting while he talks the whole time)

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Maybe if Lambieer was coaching a young lottery team. He would not take that approach with a veteran team like the Pistons.

Don`t get me wrong, I am not saying it shoudn`t be done, just not by a rookie coach like Lambieer.